New violin ‘opening up’
I’ve been told that my violin’s sound may ‘open up’ or change as I play it and over time. What does this mean? I like its current sound; that’s why I chose it. Thanks so much! Tweet
Replies (162)
And---since we age while our instrument does how do we know what causes the changes we hear!
One of "my makers" offered to regraduate the top plate of one of my violins, but after 6 months he returned it to me and said he would rather time took care of it.
"Play it another 200 years" he said. By that time I had been playing it for only 20 years. Now I have added 50 more and don't have the "same" ears.
[Better = quicker | louder | more satisfying]
(those "well", "extended" and "good" are key words :) ).
In fact, sound and playability could be worse, with time passing, but due to bad maintenance of the instrument.
So, what I meant in my post above is to be read with the assumption that "the violin and the bow remain in good working conditions".
I constantly see violinists that do not put the right care in keeping the bridge straight, for example. And this is a factor that contributes to produce a worse sound.
Or players that let old and dirty (or wrong) strings in an instrument, and pretend that it plays well for a long frame of time.....
I also don’t subscribe to the idea that such instruments need to be extensively “played in” to reach their full potential. If that theory were true, wouldn’t an instrument played in by a poor violinist end up sounding worse?
I had direct experience of this.
As yet, there is no hard evidence or bulletproof theory for playing-in effects, just conjecture and anecdotes that are impossible to separate out from the effects of time.
I've spent the better part of 40 years with the same instrument often getting a much better musician to play my instrument as I listened to hear tones, and colors that I could not then produce.
Together my instrument and I play at peak -- of course at the same time my osteoarthritic hands challenge me to keep what I have learned and developed.
Change is natural and a constant. Attribute to it to whatever you like but change is part of existence.
While I appreciate the input, I’ve had the privilege of owning or being loaned several great violins over the years, including an Andrea Amati, Scarampella, Vuillaume, Francesco Guadagnini, and Andrea Guarneri. I’m confident these instruments were already superb right after they were made, and I’m confident they were as good back then as they are now. Aging isn’t a guarantee of improvement—many of the finest violins maintain their original tonal excellence with proper care, regardless of age. So, while aging can affect an instrument, it’s not a universal rule that violins get better with time.
Furthermore, dendrochronology has disproven the theory, often pushed by crooked dealers/appraisers like Dietmar Machold, that makers 300 years ago used ancient wood for their instruments. In reality, they sourced wood from trees that were only a few decades old, not centuries. This is why no Guarneris or Stradivaris cross-match with the wood used by makers like Maggini or da Salo. Similarly, 19th-century makers did not have access to the same wood source that Stradivari or Amati did.
"I’m confident these instruments were already superb right after they were made, and I’m confident they were as good back then as they are now."
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Why?
How many of these had not undergone major interventions of one sort or another? And how would anyone other than a high-level restorer even know if they had?
If you read what I wrote, I’m not claiming to ‘know’ in the absolute sense, but rather understanding the context: the exceptional wood, the unparalleled craftsmanship, and the historical reality of these instruments all point to the fact that they were superb right from the start, not merely improved through aging.
One could argue that this is merely a trick of the mind and that players perceive a violin differently on different days or under different conditions, but this argument also runs into problems. Players are remarkably astute in picking up on certain details, and while their preferences may vary drastically, their assessments of individual violins are often quite accurate and consistent.
I think there is little question that new instruments undergo changes in their first months or years. Arching fluctuates, projection sometimes changes, the wood releases moisture, the varnish cures, and the glue cures. It’s common to cut a new soundpost after a few months to account for changes. Old instruments are often considered to mature to a point and become more consistent, but changes from repair work or setup can make that less clear.
In general, yes, new violins USUALLY change. A little. For the better? There's no way to know--it's a gamble. That is reflected in the price.
New violins will open up--meaning gain clarity and better response--but it will take years, and the day-to-day difference will be negligible. It will take tremendous patience. It's like watching your kids grow. (At least until 8th grade, when they can shoot up...).
The biggest weakness of new violins tends to be the upper positions of the D and G, so you really have to work these areas methodically, day after day, with scales and arpeggios. They open up up there, but again, it will take time and patience.
If the player lacks the technique or patience to play aggressively in the upper positions, the violin will not magically open up in that area. It also takes the ability to play right on the bridge (of course, playing in the upper positions and close to the bridge are necessary skills for advanced classical music...).
The mistake is thinking a violin will change its essential character--it won't. You can clearly see this in not-so-great vintage violins that were well played yet still have undesirable characteristics. A Landini with an unpleasant nasality comes to mind, as does a Peresson with a woofy, stuffed-with-socks sound. They probably have the same sound they started with, and they won't change, even after 50 years.
Don not buy a violin unless you try it for 2 weeks. Newly strung up violins can sound bright and resonant, then calm down as the tension settles in. If the new violin is muffled, is too bright, has an unpleasant or weak range, or you just don't like it, DON'T BUY IT.
As a (now-retired) violin maker I knew used to say, "The only problem with new violins is that they're new."
I really had to work hard playing in my 1925 Garimberti purchased in 1997.It was loud and stiff for many years and started to loosen up after hundreds of hours of interval playing in all positions.Twenty eight years later it is softening up but can be steely at times.
I think everyone has some good things to say here. I don’t know what to believe, and probably never will. Against all good advice, I’ve never tried a violin for a week, except for a loaner that I had no intention of buying because of the price. I bought straight away from owners thrice, and once from a shop.i liked what I bought, and kept each one. I’m a novice, so whatever…..maybe I don’t know any better!
Now, what about wood that’s been age 200 to 300 years after the tree was felled? The walnut and some ebony pieces in one of my violins is bout that old.
I do understand that very old fiddles are made of very dry wood, and are brittle, hence the need for repairs several times over the years. This is why I’d prefer a newer instrument next time. Of course, I’m elderly, so adopting a puppy isn’t for me, I’d get an older dog. I know it’s not the same, there’s no harm in leaving behind an instrument that’s newer than I…..
Boy, I went off into the weeds this time!
Keep em coming, I enjoy this.
One thing to keep in mind is that the only living part of a standing tree is the outermost layer; the interior can be hundreds of years old and relatively inert.
A luthier sent me some samples of Italian spruce that had been in in the beams of a 300 year old building. I tested the relevant physical/acoustics properties... density, stiffness, damping, EMC (equlibrium moisture content)... and found them to be about the same as well-seasoned modern wood. Wood that is very fresh, dried but only a year or so old, I have found to have slightly higher damping.
I have seen some papers claiming that the hemicellulose in wood polymerizes or reduces as a fraction of the wood content over time, although my measurements did not show anything that would confirm that. It is possible that thin violin plates, having more contact with air, might age differently from wood inside a tree or inside a building beam. That is my current belief, as yet unsupported by hard data (which is extremely difficult to get).
But Don Noon's experiments are more recent...
My first viola-shaped-object seemed pleasantly damped when brand new, but became more nasal with time.
It was replaced by a pre-WW1 JTL which I still treasure.
1) Violins fall apart over time, slowly but sometimes all at once.
2) Individual human beings' hearing abilities inevitably change over time.
Just as you can't dip your hand into the same river twice, you can't listen to the same violin with the same ears twice.
"Carleen Hutchins suuggested that wood contains fibres which absorb and lose moisture, and resins which may harden or crystalise with time and vibration.
But Don Noon's experiments are more recent..."
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I will assert that Don's experiments are also much more relevant. Carleen Hutchins managed to get a decent following around 30 years ago, but most violin making professionals, even if they were enamored with her concepts at one time have abandoned them, and have moved on to greener pastures.
The "fibers" are crystaline cellculose, which are quite durable, don't change much, and don't absorb moisture. The "glue", or amorphous polymers like hemicellulose that hold the fibers together, are more subject to change with time and absorb/lose moisture.
As yet there is no hard test data to show that vibration changes anything, at least at the levels that happen in a played instrument. People have tried, including me.
Furthermore, even if it did change something, there is an equal probability that the change would cause the violin to sound worse instead of better.
After all, a violin doesn't know what it is supposed to sound like.
The bad points will be there since the very begining too, such as hollow sound, lack of clarity, too many wolves, instrument choking under the bow while playing fff, bad sound in high positions, etc.
Never get an instrument thinking that it will get better with playing.
www.manfioviolas.com
After the player got the new violin from the maker, he played it for a while before forming any opinions of it. Although it was closer to what he wanted, he found it difficult to draw tone out, like he had to work harder to make it work. He sheepishly told the maker that he was having a little trouble with it, to which the maker responded “Trust me, this is the violin for you. It may take a little while to open up but it will do so if you’re patient and you play it enough.” So the player decided to keep it and wait for it to open up. Because of the difficulty of getting it to sing, he used it as a second instrument or just in practice (he had a fantastic violin to use as his main instrument anyway). For 20 years he played the violin without much change. Then one day he played it and his jaw dropped. After all that waiting the violin was finally opening up, and as he played it more it continued to do so. He ended up selling his main violin.
We can just call that an anecdote and discount it because it’s not “SCIENCE” or add it to the many accounts that players have shared over the last several centuries of violins’ tone maturing over time.
", playing the Heath Guarneri and the Bonjour Strad respectively.I have never heard or felt such rich and powerful tone in my 39 year career."
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Peter Carter, had you not known what the instruments were prior to hearing them, would your assessment have been the same?
If you say that it would have been the same, my next question will be, "How do you know that? Via what means have you managed to totally liberate yourself from all the well-known human predispositions and foibles?
Unfortunately, the owners of such instruments are highly unlikely to agree to participate, because the instruments’ monetary value is based on the assumption that they sound better and nothing can ever match them.
There have been numerous comparison tests between old and modern instruments, with and without knowing which instrument was being played. With the fact that there is variability in the instruments and variability in the personal preferences of the players and listeners, there has never been any conclusive results.
I do believe that there tends to be some sound differences between old and modern violins that can be heard if you know what to listen for, and can show up on spectral response plots... but again, not 100% due to variability. And preference is a separate issue.
Sadly for Ronald Praill, his violins have never "taken off" in the marketplace. In 1983 one sold at Sotheby's for £220...
What we do know as scientifically verifiable facts are that human hearing gets progressively worse over a lifetime and that violins fall apart over time thus requiring adjustment and repairs.
What we also know is that any change in a violin due to time and activity would be equally likely to cause it to sound "worse" as it is to sound "better." (I put those words in quotes because they are both completely subjective evaluations without measurable scientific standards.)
What we also know is that we cannot separate "changes" in a violin's tone strictly due to the variables of age and activity from other variables like set-up, strings, bow effects, etc.
Finally we also know that perpetuating the myth that old violins sound better than when they were new is a useful myth for selling older violins and is unlikely to go away because.
I did identify the others incorrectly, mostly because I had a brain fart when trying to guess which one would be more nasal, and which weaker.
I understand what youre saying though.I played a gig in London( Ont) a few weeks ago.The soloist was using the ex Borher Guarneri and during the break he kindly played a brand new Mark Schnurr Guarneri model violin that a section player just purchased.It was fantastic ,even in comparison to the delGesu.It needs to be played in more.
So much is the player as we all know too.I remember Steven Staryk using my Cuypers in my lessons to demonstrate a point.I never heard it sound like that before.It was always depressing when he handed it back to me.
Years ago my daughter was getting ready for her very first violin solo recital at the age of 9 or so. "Pieces from Book 2" were on the menu. My dad and I were standing around in the little space that we had rented when, from behind us, came a sudden wave of rich, beautiful violin tone. When we turned around it was Vladimir -- our daughter's teacher -- tuning and playing her unlabeled 1/2 size instrument. Surely he would have sounded even better on an Italian antique but I came away from that experience also thinking that the hands of the master are, in some sense, an equalizing force, especially when one is playing for an audience that has maybe not heard so many truly great violins up-close.
Who does the “we” represent when you keep saying “we know” this or “we know” that? While I agree that hearing generally declines over time in ways that have been well documented through the ages, the other things that you claim to be collectively known as established facts do not strike me as being so definitively decided.
Perhaps violins can become worse sounding over time (I’m not so sure of that), but if it’s been shown that violins don’t improve over time (also not so certain of this), that’s not proof that they degrade or that they’re equally likely to degrade. That’s speculation, not fact. Violins don’t just rot away into nothing—we still have thousands of them that have survived far longer than anyone who first made them could ever have imagined. Yes, restorers put great resources and care into keeping them playable and sounding good, but how many other 300 year old items can you use every day for hours during your lifetime without being the last owner?
The new vs. old debate has been going on for centuries now and will continue to do so until there aren’t any old violins left to compare. It gets tiring to hear the same argument trotted out every few years as though it’s some timely and burning issue that must be addressed, but ultimately it’s a good driver for enthusiasm in the market. People who feel strongly about new instruments will confirm their bias in favor of them and people who favor the old ones will do the same. Shops can either offer both options or specialize in one. Those in the middle will say that the tests are inconclusive and continue to use their own subjective opinions of sound to choose from a selection provided them.
It is an objectively measured and measurable biological fact that human hearing deteriorates over a lifetime.
It is an objectively measurable fact that violins fall apart over time and require maintenance and repairs to stay operational. Some deterioration is simple to fix (such as string changes and breakage); other deterioration cannot be restored to the original condition (such as plate shrinkage and distortion, cracks, varnish wear, etc.).
There are no surviving 300-year-old violins that have not been subject to these kinds of deterioration and repairs. None are in their original condition. Many others have simply not survived, such as much of Stradivarius’ production.
In the bigger picture, like everything else in the known universe, violins are subject to the second law of thermodynamics.
The null hypothesis that “violins do not get better over time” is scientifically untestable because there are not any objective measures of “better” and the variable “time” cannot be separated from other variables such as string changes, bows, players, repairs, random wear, adjustments, and on and on.
Because it is both untestable and therefore unprovable, the myth that “violins get better over time” is handy for selling old violins or making promises about newer ones, particularly for buyers and sellers who don’t understand that anecdotes are not evidence. There is no shortage of people who choose to believe in supernatural clap-trap rather than scientific methodology and evidence.
There are things that make me prefer a new or newer violin over an antique, cost being the main one. Mine were made in 2021 and 2024. I’m pretty okay with that. When the dings inevitably appear, they will be my dings.
As a person who started "diddling" with these things 70 years ago on his own instruments (after soundposts had fallen) I have experienced how important a "silly millimeter" can be (not on all instruments) - and I have also had at least one "quick and dirty" new soundpost and setting by a "professional."
As soon as you bring in "better," "worse," "open up," "resonant," or any of the multitude of other attributes used to describe violin tone, you leave the field of science and enter the murk of human perception and preferences.
You could come around the back door to science as Claudia Fritz is trying to do by conducting large surveys and correlating the responses, but that requires a lot of effort and usually doesn't give concrete, unquestionable answers.
My preference is for something more objective... looking at frequency response plots to see what features correspond to what listeners/players hear. It's not super-rigorous, but it's something I find interesting.
You’ve got it backwards—selling a violin with a promise that it’ll open up is a benefit to the new maker. Newly made violins are usually on the harsher and less refined side. How long this lasts before the violin settles into its string tension and new set of strings is debatable. Salesmen and players alike speak much about how new violins will open up as they’re played more. Just read many of the posts on this site where players talk about the new instruments they’ve bought and their experiences of the tone developing with use.
Old violins are expected to be mature sounding already when you pick them up, so one that sounds closed to a player tends to be rejected right away. The player will reason that if the violin has not managed to develop a complex tone yet despite being old, it is unlikely to be improved with continued playing. Now the sound may be heavily influenced by the setup, but regardless of the cause of the perceived tonal detriment, the effect must be taken seriously.
Not yet, anyway. Sometimes science is hard-to-impossible with current tools. Violin "quality" takes the general form of a social science in the sense that there are too many parameters to control at once, biases come in from every direction, and gathering enough data that a trend might appear above noise is entirely impractical (far too expensive). Can AI and machine learning help? Science builds better tools for itself continually. I think Don is making the entirely valid point that we can't even agree on the questions to ask or the language to use. Hypothesis-driven research can't really get off the ground without those basic items.
In the summer of 1984 I had a lab-tech job at Diversey Wyandotte, a manufacturer of institutional laundry detergents. The problem of optimizing product formulations was daunting -- too many parameters. The chemists there made a huge advance by subscribing to a then-new service called CompuServe, which offered a Design of Experiments engine; my supervisor connected by modem using terminal-emulator software running on a PC-XT!
But just because science can't answer a question now doesn't mean one falls back on stuff that's "not even wrong" like superstition or tradition.
Yet violins still sell because they appeal to buyers, not because they have impressive data analyses. Players who set a budget and don’t care about age or provenance just play everything they come across and make a decision based on what they like best. Who’s to say there’s anything wrong with that and that it’s ignorant to look to tradition and inherited wisdom to make decisions when the scientific research yields nothing conclusive?
It’s unwise to be against scientific research, but it’s equally unwise to be against tradition and its carefully accumulated and curated knowledge. There have been instances where conventional ideas have been rejected after new studies in science, only to be rediscovered as genuinely useful ideas after further studies have been done.
In some ways, violins are like food. There is no issue with saying that you like restaurant A better than restaurant B, and relying on critics, friends, or internet surveys to find a "good" restaurant is the norm. But saying that "A" IS BETTER than "B" is a statement of fact that can not be proven.
In some narrow ways, violins are different... there are quantitative acoustic measurements that can show differences between instruments and over time... and perhaps those measurements can correlate to some perceived quality (like higher amplitude in the 2 - 5 kHz range might be judged "brighter"). But the preferred level of brightness (among many other things) gets back to the food-like situation of individual or collective taste.
Parker, I’ve heard that statement about Pinchas told about several great musicians. They can make about any instrument sound good. There’s a young guy in Brazil who plays a cheap child’s Sponge Bob ukulele, and makes it sound like a $5,000 hand made Hawaiian model.
A violin’s tone on a given day depends on many many factors: the player, the bow, the strings, the room, the climate, the aural health of the listener, and on and on. All of these are malleable. Change in tone strictly due to aging is, in fact, immeasurable.
From your posts, it is clear that you want to continue to propagate myths around violins that are both unproven and unprovable. Using jargon like “mature sounding” may sound sophisticated but it is devoid of meaning. There is an “if we all believe it then it must be true” kind of magical thinking in the violin culture (and other cultures) which propogates beliefs in incredible anecdotes and stories as supportive facts and no critical thinking on the part of the believers.
Your idea that “It’s unwise to be against scientific research, but it’s equally unwise to be against tradition and its carefully accumulated and curated knowledge” is not only absurd, it is dangerous. For example, the backlash against science that has been underway in this country (U.S.) such as the current doubting the effectiveness of vaccines is going to continue to cause many more preventable deaths of children and is causing the resurgence of diseases such as measles and polio.
People believe what they want to believe even when there is no hard evidence to support those beliefs or there is overwhelming evidence against those beliefs. Critical thinking is hard. Giving up long-held beliefs is hard. Our thinking is loaded with cognitive biases.
One of the most interesting lectures I’ve heard was at the Oberlin Acoustics workshop in 2012. Evan Davis, who worked for Boeing doing acoustic analysis and developed an interest in violins because of their mystifying complexity, decided to conduct an experiment focused on consistency. Violins are known to players for their drastically different tones, considered as uniquely different as human speaking voices. So Davis decided to plot the response patterns of a large sample of violins of all kinds in one graph. For comparison, a completely machined metal object made to exact tolerances was chosen: the beer can. Davis took acoustic measurements of a large sample of cans and plotted them as well. When the two graphs were merged, the results were amazing; beer cans, all made to the same dimensions, with the same thicknesses and materials and air volume, were wildly different in “tone” when compared to violins. The violins sounded leagues apart to listeners, but the differences on the graph were almost negligible in comparison. That experiment suggested a couple possibilities: either everyone should completely disbelieve their ears when listening to violins or the complexity of violin sound is so great that it still remains mysterious despite the advances in analysis. The continued work of the acoustics groups since that time has demonstrated an abiding interest in gaining a better understanding of violin tone, not calling it mysticism.
It’s a rather tired and sophistical argument to simply label anything that extends beyond personal understanding as myth, superstition, subversive ideology, or dangerous. The irony of statements of this nature about cognitive bias is staggering. True science seeks to be unbiased in its search for understanding, and to achieve this there must be constant questioning of principles and practices. Scientists have to detach themselves from personal opinion in a dogged pursuit of objectivity. Even then, personal bias can easily creep in, so everything must be approached with considerable skepticism and exhaustively critiqued.
To me, science is about the process, not the result. Its goal is not the acquisition or collection of knowledge but its pursuit. Scientific experiments yield convincing results, and societally we tend to follow the latest findings. Any scientist with integrity will acknowledge the possibility that current understanding may be wrong and may need to be changed.
But science, noble pursuit that it is, is also not the only noble pursuit. There is a tendency to treat science as a religion of its own. That is of course antithetical to the purpose of science, but its aim is perverted and misused by many of the very people who accuse others of a lack of “critical thinking.” Science is used as a shield to hide behind while hurling insults at “heathen unbelievers.”
“Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. They represent the wisdom of our race.”
-Stanley Kunitz
I guess I asked an unanswerable question. I’ll be interested to see how my violin matures, but it’ll be likely more me than it, as has been pointed out.
Geez, we can't even trust beer cans? LOL
I say this as a former scientist (physicist myself.
The null hypothesis that “violins do not get better over time” has not and cannot be rejected by scientific testing.
There is no valid objective reproducible scientific proof that violins get “better” strictly due to aging and there never can be. Even the fastest quantum computer and the smartest AI imaginable won’t be able to prove it.
I hope that this fact is comforting to the original poster who liked their violin tone as it is and was worried that it would change over time.
(Yes, I understand that there are people who dislike the word “never.” If that is your peeve, then just substitute “infinitely small probability” for “never.”) :-)
All the other stuff seems purely subjective…..
Preferences are all over the place.
Another possibility for a “difference” is that “older” violins have had more repairs than “newer” violins because violins fall apart over time. How does one remove that variable? Break and repair some newer violins and test them? If it is "the old ones are just thinner" then that should be testable by using newer violins with thin tops as part of the large sample set.
In regards to the perceived sudden changes of a violin’s tone, as Paul and others have pointed out, there are many possible rational physical explanations that are possible without invoking some magical phenomena of “opening up.” A tiny shift of the bridge, for example, can cause noticeable shifts in tone, for better or worse.
I have thinned out quite a number of violins, including my own, sometimes to sub-Strad levels to see what happens. I don't see the response curves (or the played sound) becoming convincingly similar to truely old violins. Just my observation, biased or not.
The theory that broken violins sound better has been suggested before. Sam Zygmuntowicz did a bit of experimenting for fun with “gluey,” a violin intentionally broken and repaired over and over to look for the tonal implications. The problem is that there are still a lot of old violins that aren’t damaged that sound great if they’ve been cared for. I’ve heard some say that violins sound the best right before they fall apart, almost like an old pair of jeans, but that’s not been my own experience and it would be rather difficult to prove.
The idea that a violin’s tone is vacuum-sealed in time until damage breaks the seal just doesn’t make sense. Violins aren’t fruit—they don’t have expiration dates at which they cease to be usable and they don’t just wilt after some short period of freshness. Many centuries-old violins are still in everyday use and sound truly amazing, and they’re not all Frankenstein monsters that have been sewn together from various cadaver parts.
"What are the problems concerning antique violins?
I have talked at length with experts. The result is extremely simple. The material seasons and ages. With time the wood becomes more venerable... but ultimately ... too old.
It does not exactly decay, but certainly does not improve, and loses elasticity.
I mostly play one of my two modern violins.
With all due respect, we must not forget that the finest classical violins are at least 250 years old. I am an incurable optimist, but I'm convinced that the Stradivaris, the Guarneris, the Amatis, the Grancinos, the Ruggeris, the Gaglianos and the Stainers will not be "playable" much longer unless they are completely restored.
This then gives rise to the problem of whether such an instrument can still be considered antique and original or whether instead it is the restorer who has bestowed upon that violin its balanced timbre and sonorousness, rather than the violinmaker who made it.
Consequently, the question arises of whether it is not more practical to resort from the begining to a new instrument" (FRNAKFURTER ALLGEMEINE, Magazine, 30.01.87)
And in the Strad, September, 1988, we will find:
"In his final period, in addition to the "Le Duc, he (Szeryng) played on two French violins, one by Pierre Hel made in 1922 and the other by Jean Bauer, a comtemporary maker."
Unless the damage is due to a catastrophic occurrence, violins fall apart slowly. Strings die and break, seams open, varnish wears off, plates shrink and distort, crack open, necks pull up and on and on. Such falling apart plus subsequent repairs and adjustments affects tone and these effects cannot be separated experimentally from supposed aging effects.
Nobody has said here “that they just plateau for hundreds of years until they mysteriously fall apart.” That is a strawman argument.
Nobody has said here “that a violin’s tone is vacuum-sealed in time until damage breaks the seal.” That is another strawman argument.
It is true that “many centuries-old violins are still in everyday use and sound truly amazing” as it is also true that many more violins made centuries ago have not survived and that many that still exist don’t sound so wonderful. It is also true that many newer violins made by modern makers also sound “truly amazing.”
The simple fact remains that the myth that “violins get better as they get older” is both unproven and unprovable for the reasons that I have written in this thread. Age is not an isolatable variable from the myriad of other tone-impacting variables.
"It is true that “many centuries-old violins are still in everyday use and sound truly amazing as it is also true that many more violins made centuries ago have not survived and that many that still exist don’t sound so wonderful."
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All that is true.
"George is a renowned soloist so his opinion must matter!!"
More insightful additions to the conversation by Lyndon Taylor.
I own (amongst others) two violins since 2002, one of them build that year in Germany, one 1866 in Paris, minimal insignificant sample size but still an experience I can share of how they developed as I bought them at the same time and I still play the new one as my go to instrument while the other one sits in my secondary residence to be played there as I go there only work related and do not like to travel with violin case all the time.
The new one did somewhat change more in the time, required a new sound post after a couple of years. Going back, it is still a very similar instrument. I cannot recall the older one changing significantly enough to be relevant. Changes in sound post position, strings or general setup surely did more than the aging in this time frame.
My playing over the years very clearly is the biggest change of all. So the violins in relation stayed much closer than my perception of a single one of them.
The general characteristics of both violins stayed the same.
Some violins not made well seem to change a lot quickly, you could almost call it deforming, but that is not common.
However, without telling if violins get better or worse over time, I think if you like a violin and your taste will not change, you will continue liking it, as it keeps most of its character.
Now, there is a different thing, players change what they want / need a lot of times. So, unless one is very far in its development I think it is much more likely the player outgrows the violin than the violin changing too much (at least nothing that cannot be countered via setup).
Oh and to put in more bias: I played awesome new instruments, awful old ones and the other way around.
I do own a couple of violins that can be considered high tier, including an old Italian one worth more than my house by now. I am still convinced that new violins are not inferior in general. There are great sounding modern violins.
The sound of violins does change a bit over centuries maybe, but more a matter of taste, imho.
If you consider new violins flat, I insist you are either bias or did not play good modern instruments.
But, all of this is irrelevant when you buy a violin, because you can only choose it based on its *current* sound. No one knows how it will change in 100 years, so one shouldn't base their decision off of that idea.
I used to say that the advantage of trying older violins is that any changes that are going to occur have already happened, but that's not accurate. They'll continue to change, just as a new violin would.
Disclaimer: a violin that is made of wood that hasn't fully dried will change drastically even in just a year. But if we're talking about violins over $5k or $10k, this is an unlikely scenario.
There is a belief among a lot of luthiers that a fiddle (or a cello) will play better after a long time -- 100 years -- because the wood hardens and the resins oxidize. But there's no way to prove this.
The only really rigorous attempts to determine whether you can hear the difference between old and new instruments were the blind auditions done at the Violin Society of America in Indianapolis and in Paris.
In the first trial listeners were blindfolded and couldn't tell the difference between old Italian instruments (including some Strads) and quality modern violins.
In Paris the violinists playing the instruments were also blindfolded, and they were also unable to tell whether they were playing on old or new instruments. Players and listeners were just as likely to prefer new fiddles as old ones.
So I think until something better comes along to disprove this, the burden of proof should be on people who insist old instruments are better simply because of their age.
Strads are usually (not always) excellent sounding violins, but is their age part of the reason? Probably not -- it's because they were made in a workshop of a great master luthier. And I think it's pretty well agreed that there are workshops around the world today making fiddles crafted just as beautifully as anything coming out of Cremona at the turn of the 18th century.
Maple and walnut are the most pleasing to the eyes, IMHO.
Sadly, my cats have never been allowed into my shop, because they jump up on tables and shelves and bat stuff around and stuff.
Conversely, another datapoint with Joseph Szigeti's Petrus Guarneri-- supposedly it sounded absolutely awful. Unless it was played perfectly in tune. Whether that was the maker, the luthier, or the artist who sent decades of overtones through it is another question.
Of course, music played in-tune is going to sound “better” than music played out-of-tune on the same violin. “Ring” or sympathetic vibrations is a factor that will contribute to that.
Violins react with more subtlety right under the ear than for the audience at a public showing...
'Tis not alone my antique fiddle, good man...
This can also be a substantial problem with old violins that haven't been played for an eon.
The irony of it all is so great for a couple reasons. First, the argument was made that anything suggesting a dissent from the opinion that violins deteriorate and sound either the same or worse was just biased, unscientific, mystical opinion. Phrases like “We know that (x)” were used as established scientific facts. It was pointed out that scientists do not themselves use such bold and definitive language (it’s much more likely that you’ll hear things like “Our research suggests that (x),” or “Our current model supports a hypothesis that (x)”). Scientists have learned from history that making bold and absolute claims of scientific fact does not hold up well over time, especially when scientific understanding can take such drastic turns even over short periods. These “we
know” statements have the ring of the religious credo, except that even the credo only goes so far as the realm of belief, reserving the acquisition of knowledge and certainty to divinity. The further the discussion has unfolded the more it has become clear that in order to accept the argument that violins sound worse over time or are unchanging (after the unspecified new-violin phase), one must venture far outside the realm of science and reason, dare I say into the realm of mysticism. Pot: meet kettle.
Second, the irony is inescapable that there has been so much complaining about the use of opinion or anecdote to discuss a topic related to the violin—on an online forum dedicated to the discussion of violin topics where posters show up specifically to share their anecdotes and opinions. Of course it functions in other ways (a place to share violin news, market products, place queries about product availability, etc.), but at its core a forum is a place for discussion of ideas and opinions.
It was sitting for 5 years, only getting tuned once in a while. The closest thing it had to being "played in", was it maybe having friendly resonances when I played another violin close by.
One thing I learned over the years: when it comes to this and similar topics, is not to give too much of a damn about what single people tell about such things, even from great players and makers. Especially, when someone insists on knowing it without any doubt.
Way way too much bias in all directions.
The only thing I really hate about all of this is, when people without the capability to judge instruments themselves get sold a 100 year old industrial instrument that "sounds great because it is old".
This is all harmless except for the phenomenon Marc references, when parents who may not have the money get bullied into spending $20,000 for an old instrument when $2,000 or $3,000 would buy an excellent modern instrument that will take their kid as far as he wants to go. The violin business is more like the used car business than people would like to admit.
Pull out Occam's Razor and a more direct explanation is in plain sight - the violin will resonate better when it's tuned properly - violins are designed and crafted to ring better at certain frequencies, so perfect tuning is really important.
Advancing players should be taught advanced tuning -- how to really hear and feel when a violin's in tune. That's the foundation.
And then of course a violin sounds elegant in the hands of a player who plays elegantly. Students who can tune their instruments perfectly will probably better players than those who can't.
Reminds me of a Heifetz dressing room story. A fan wanders by after the concert and gushes, "Maestro, your violin really sounded great tonight." The Maestro, with that trademark Heifetz puckish espression, hands him the fiddle: "Here, you try it, let's see if it sounds that way for you."
So he could truthfully respond by telling them it was Suzuki cello.
It just occurred to me that HIP415 would be a nice license plate for someone so inclined.
I guess there is a certain point that needs to be reached, like pitch stability and not getting splinters while shifting.
A great player will also not have a lot of issues playing an instrument that is a bit out of tune. Sure, I can hear it playing on the g string if the a string is out of tune (at least on a violin that is resonant enough). But those kind of effects are more about sound color can can be played around at a certain skill level. All the other effects are much less recognizable in a typical listeners distance.
Of course, at the same time instruments can allow for certain tonal colors easier or harder (or maybe not at all).
My most played violin is a Rittwagen. The maker once said to me, a good violin needs to be able to sound well with a string that snapped and got knotted back together and a good player needs to be able to play such a violin. While it was a snarky comment in a string discussion and wolf tones, there was a lot of wisdom to it.
Marc, you hit the nail right on the old bean.
Also the "I am awesome thing" - wtf, did Siri put that in there when I was dictating on the phone? I'm truly puzzled and a bit embarrassed - not exactly my personality if you know me well!
But I'll continue to argue that violins open up, when played in a way where they are resonating well on a constant basis!
I'd also point to this story as food for thought: Intonation, a Physical Phenomenon.
As for the awesome comment, it was actually awesome and made me smile! :D It was also obviously autocorrect.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWm952bbmIE&pp=ygUWZXhwZW5zaXZlIGF1ZGlvIGNhYmxlcw%3D%3D
Concerning the OP I remain agnostic. Yes, my subjective impression is that a violin opens up with playing but I can't see that this can be related to whether or not it is played in tune.
With cables, isolating variables is rather easy and measuring electrical signals is as well.
Violins have way too many coupled variables in order to isolate it like that.
While my private oscilloscope here is basically enough to disprove HiFi-Cable-Bs, there is no experimental way of even measuring "openness" of a violin, let alone isolate the parameters influencing it in a way it would allow to draw a definite conclusion.
Of course, this does not mean that we cannot do quality educated guesses and experiments in order to have more knowledge than just pure guessing.
Regardless of how easy or not it is to disprove, the person making the video is absolutely convinced that these cables are altering the clarity/soundstage/color of his audio setup. Now it doesn't mean that because he's convinced of that, that anyone else who's convinced of anything is wrong. But it does show that it's possible.
My ear is definitely worse than Laurie's and most if not all of the participants here. Still, I think there's so many possible explanations for the phenomena being described that it would be hard for me to be convinced of any one of them.
And I agree, I for example switch between HD800S and K812Pro headphones between living places and everytime it feels "new" to me.
There is also some real "burning in" with the foams getting closer to my head form and so on.
Personally I am 100% sure, I need to adjust to each headphones, the same with violins.
Every time I feel a violin has changed I take another one and compare them to each other relatively. I often find them being exactly at the same level different as always, but they each feal very different.
With respect to HiFi cables: I think I already shared this in another thread, but here is the link to a funny blind test comparing audio signals run through copper wire compared to the same signals run through mud and bananas. It looks like almost nobody was able to hear a difference to copper wires, but some said they preferred the sound run through bananas.
However, I prefer investing in violins and staying at a "decent" HiFi level instead of amazing equipment.
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